Spinning a Web of CreativityDuring my performances and workshops I enjoy creating and improvising new stories with students and adults.

I find that a group will usually enjoy helping to create a new story if I tell them a story or two first. It is even better if one of those stories has been the result of an improvisation with a earlier similar group.

Creating a new story is such an active process. Participants need to be able to listen, follow a story, understand the story and story structure, select an appropriate development, express that idea to the group in an enthusiastic and clear way and adjust their expectations as the story develops and changes. Being part of a group development of a story is a positive, empowering experience.

I love helping people about their own country, their own places. Often I'll say to an audience, "Would you like to hear a story from the city or the country?" Often they will prefer the opposite to their own place of residence and I'll select a story from the country or the city that I've created with another audience and tell it to them. Afterwards, I'll often say, "That was pretty good story but I reckon we could do better. Do you think so?" If my audience are children they'll say "Yes!" and we'll start off on the process of creating our own story.

Many of these stories stay in my repertoire and are told in different places around Australia. Many of them get published here on my website or on my blog - austories.blogspot.com .